Pauline Oliveros: Creating, Performing And Listening

FRANK J. OTERI: The last area that I want to about which sort of an extension of the hearing and listening thing, I have a favorite piece of your music. I absolutely adore Crone Music. I think it’s a phenomenal, phenomenal work. You created it to go with a production of King Lear, and it would be described as “incidental music,” but I think that term “incidental music” is somewhat pejorative. If we’re listening, nothing is incidental.

PAULINE OLIVEROS: That’s right. Actually in working with Lee [Breuer] on Lear, the idea was to have music that played all the way through so that there was always music throughout the whole thing, and that certainly is not incidental. It was a lot of fun.

FRANK J. OTERI: It’s a wonderful, wonderful piece.

PAULINE OLIVEROS: Did you see it?

FRANK J. OTERI: No, I only have a CD so I have this divorced experience. I’ve never heard it at a concert or in the theater, just in my home.

PAULINE OLIVEROS: Well, Crone Music can stand alone, so can Lear. (both laugh) But in this case, they wanted music as a constant, as a part of the set.

FRANK J. OTERI: It would be very interesting to see how it works with King Lear, and to hear how it works with King Lear.

PAULINE OLIVEROS: You know that they dropped all the royalty so they didn’t call it King Lear, just Lear, and the roles were gender reversed so Ruth Maleczech played Lear.

FRANK J. OTERI: Oh wow. And Cordelia then was male.

PAULINE OLIVEROS: Yes.

FRANK J. OTERI: What was the gender of the Fool?

PAULINE OLIVEROS: Transsexual.

FRANK J. OTERI: You know there’s this cooky theory that Cordelia and the Fool were played by the same actor originally. They’re never on the stage at the same time. And the Fool is the only character who doesn’t abandon Lear, just as Cordelia remains true to him in her words…

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